CeCe Moore


CeCe Moore is an American genetic genealogist who has appeared as a guest on many TV shows and as a consultant on others such as Finding Your Roots. She has helped law enforcement agencies in identifying suspects in over 50 cold cases in one year using DNA and genetic genealogy. In May 2020, she began appearing in a prime time ABC television series called The Genetic Detective in which each episode recounts a cold case she helped solve.

Background

Moore was born in 1969 to Anthony Michael Moore and Janis Proctor. She studied theatre, film, and vocal performance at the University of Southern California and appeared in commercials, directed and casted advertising campaigns, as well as professional musical theatre shows such as The Fantasticks and West Side Story.
Moore became interested in DNA genealogy in 2003 and has appeared as a guest on TV shows such as Finding Your Roots, 20/20, The Doctors, The Dr. Oz Show, CBS This Morning, The Today Show, Good Morning America and CBS 60 Minutes. She is the genetic genealogy consultant for Finding Your Roots and Genealogy Roadshow and heads the Parabon NanoLabs genetic genealogical unit.

Human identification cases

Moore has been a key player in a number of human identification cases. In 2014, she was the genetic genealogist who worked with the Branum family on the Thomas Ray Lippert University of Utah artificial insemination sperm swap case. Paul Fronczak was a newborn who was kidnapped from his mother's arms by a woman posing as a nurse in a Chicago hospital in 1964 and believed to have been returned to his natural parents in 1966. In 2015, Moore's team of genetic genealogists uncovered the true identity of the man raised as Paul Fronczak. Using the methods Moore uses for birth parent search in adoption, it was discovered that his real name is Jack Rosenthal and he has a missing twin named Jill. The real Paul Fronczak was found living in Michigan in 2019. In 2015, Moore and a team of researchers established the true identity of amnesiac Benjaman Kyle as William Burgess Powell. In 2004, Kyle had been found outside a Burger King in Georgia; doctors determined he suffered from dissociative amnesia. For 11 years neither Kyle nor law enforcement assisting in his case knew his true identity, which he was able to later reclaim. Moore works with adults who were abandoned as babies to identify their biological identities. The birth parents of California foundling Kayla Tovo were identified, as were the birth parents of the Los Angeles area three half-sibling foundlings who were featured on 20/20 in May 2016, and the birth parents of the Tulsa Fairgrounds foundling "May Belle" aka Amy Cox, as featured on The Dr. Oz Show in October 2016.
As a genetic genealogy researcher for the PBS series Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., in 2015 Moore made the discovery that LL Cool J's mother was adopted. Through analysis of his DNA, she was able to identify his biological grandparents and introduce him to his 90-year old biological maternal grandmother.

Projects

Family research

Moore founded a Facebook group called DNA Detectives Facebook group for adoptees and others of unknown parentage trying to use DNA to help identify birth family. In 2018, this Facebook page had 100,000 followers.
As a result of discovering that her brother-in-law is a direct descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings after a 23andMe test revealed unexpected African ancestry, Moore founded the Hemings/Jefferson Autosomal DNA Project.

Criminal investigations

In 2018 Moore joined Parabon NanoLabs as head of their genetic genealogy unit and had three genealogists working for her. Parabon investigates cold cases using genetic genealogy. In September 2018 Moore said she was able to solve about half of the cases on which she was working. In February 2019 she was optimistic that most cold cases could be solved using public DNA data in a few years. However, in May 2019, GEDmatch, the DNA database that she had mostly used to solve cold cases, changed its privacy rules so that it became much more difficult to solve cold cases. Moore said "Whatever one thinks about this decision, it is inarguable that it is a setback for justice and victims and their families." In May 2020 she said they had solved 109 cases.

Case results

2018